Unlikely new lawmaker rode winds of change

Jerry McNerney always thought he would win his race for Congress. It’s just that nobody else did.

Why would anyone? He’s a 55-year-old math wonk and wind energy expert who never even ran for class president. He likes to climb wind turbines. He named his daughter Windy. The idea of speaking in front of a crowd makes him nervous.

But there he was last week, standing on the Capitol steps with the other freshmen, eating hors d’oeuvres at the White House, a symbol of voter fury so extreme that even eggheads prevailed in this month’s midterm election.

A soft-spoken scientist with a doctorate in math, McNerney is one of a handful of underdogs and gadflies swept into Washington on an anti-Republican wave that washed in not only handpicked establishment Democrats, but a few who didn’t appear to have a prayer.

The elite of their party dismissed them as clutter. They were outspent by their opponents by as much as 10 to 1, their campaigns engineered not by slick Washington consultants, but friends and neighbors.

Up on Capitol Hill, they’ve taken to calling McNerney the dragon slayer for taking down Rep. Richard W. Pombo of Tracy, the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee who had won handily seven times in his Republican-leaning Northern California district.

What put such challengers over the top was not merely the Iraq war, but a string of corruption scandals and misdeeds -- alleged wife beating, the alleged choking of an alleged mistress, Internet come-ons to congressional pages -- that drove voters to show once-invincible incumbents the door.

In Pombo’s case, it was his affiliation with convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and attempts to dismantle the Endangered Species Act, which got him labeled “Eco-thug” and “Wildlife Enemy No. 1.”

In that environment, unpolished and unpackaged candidates like McNerney started to look rather refreshing to voters. McNerney drove himself around in a rented PT Cruiser (his 10-year-old Toyota Camry wasn’t up to the task), knocking on doors and spreading his message of alternative energy and a new direction in Iraq. He once campaigned at an aviary festival held to celebrate the crane.

“He’s a good example of perseverance winning. He felt like he had a chance, and everybody said, ‘Jerry, you don’t have a chance,’ but he kept going,” said communications director Rob Caughlan.

It all began in 2004 with his son, Michael, who had joined the Air Force after Sept. 11 and noticed while filling out an absentee ballot that no one was opposing Pombo. He called his dad and urged him to run.

McNerney put aside his plans for a start-up company he was going to call HAWT Power -- Horizontal Access Wind Turbine Power -- and threw his white Panama hat into the ring. (It’s not a very statesmanlike chapeau, but his doctors advise it to protect against skin cancer.)

“I hadn’t thought of running at all until he called me,” McNerney said last week, on a break from freshman boot camp at the Capitol.

He needed 1,740 write-in votes in the primary that June to get on the November 2004 ballot. He came up 73 short, paid for a recount, found another 75 votes, and it was McNerney against Pombo, who thumped him.

But McNerney looked at the 38% he won in a first try and decided to go again this year. He and Mary, his wife of 29 years, have been living mostly off their savings while he, aptly, tilted at political windmills.

He started with almost no money. The Democratic Party endorsed somebody else, a veteran named Steve Filson, who strategists thought was less liberal and therefore more palatable. McNerney beat him.

Pombo’s ethics problems grew, and environmentalists mobilized for McNerney in a show of green muscle that hadn’t been seen in years. Crowds gathered at his speeches; friends and volunteers helped him overcome his fear of public speaking. He practiced in his backyard and at the local park, where he could work on projecting without bothering anybody.

While the Pombo campaign flooded the airwaves with liberal-scare ads, McNerney maintained a smaller but persistent presence. Bigwigs began to take notice. Both national parties poured money into a race they had never expected to bother with. President Bush came to the district for Pombo, former President Clinton for McNerney. He and Clinton hung out together in an airplane hangar afterward, discussing wind.

McNerney volunteers seemed to be everywhere. The Saturday before election day, there were 1,039 of them on the streets.

He struggled with the occasional mixed metaphor, Caughlan recalled. One involved “climbing to the mountaintop and now it is rolling toward us!” But the voters didn’t seem to care. They wanted anything but slick.

When the results were in, Pombo -- who won by 22 percentage points two years ago -- had lost by 6 points.

“I guess there is quite a buzz at the American Mathematical Society,” McNerney said.

Now the dream is real. He got off a red-eye flight last week and arrived at the downtown hotel where the freshmen were put up. When he saw all the Capitol Police, he knew he was in the right place. As he registered, two strangers recognized him from news photographs.

“That’s when I thought, ‘OK, this is it,’ ” he said.

The learning curve is steep and the details of setting up offices and life on two coasts daunting.

But McNerney has already formed a freshman task force on energy and global warming.

Not intimidated by authority, he shook Bush’s hand at the White House soiree and thanked the president and the first lady for visiting his district, which he believes helped him more than it helped Pombo.

McNerney takes his place as one of the few PhDs ever elected to Congress and perhaps the only one who can prove that an imaginary number to an imaginary exponent is a real number. Which is sure to wow them in the cloakroom.

His wife, a homemaker, wants to keep the house where they raised their three children in a modest neighborhood in Pleasanton, Calif. She’s not keen on living in Washington. “I worried we might be living in a fishbowl,” she said.

Some supporters have urged her to dye her “gray highlights,” but she has decided to “just be me.”

A tireless campaigner, she plans to be her husband’s eyes and ears in the district. “There is so much to do here,” she said, not the least of which is they both need clothes. Her husband only owns two suits, and she figures she’ll need some sort of ball gown. “All those events,” she said.

McNerney is looking to rent a cheap place to live in during the week -- “he’s not a wealthy man,” Caughlan said -- and will commute home on weekends. He hates to fly; he gets airsick.

“Eck,” the congressman-elect said at the thought. “I am absolutely determined to get over it. Our country is at such risk now. Nothing else matters.”

faye.fiore@latimes.com